Dr. M'Behga portrayed by the late Booker Bradshaw was a versatile actor and also a Motown record executive during that era. He appeared various tv series during 60's and 70's. He also was an accomplished and writer wrote material for Columbo, Get Christie Love and Planet of The Apes. The man also learned to speak 3 languages while graduating from Harvard. This episode marked one of his two appearances on TOS the other being in the final season of the series.
@@CourtReacts-zm9yv yeah, Shatner’s toupee is awesome. You can’t even really tell. But the wigs on this show in general are terrible. But this episode may be the worst.
"Risk is our business" is I think one of the greatest speeches in Star Trek history and the one that best sums up what Star Trek is all about. A few years ago, somebody overlaid the audio with images from NASA and it fits perfectly (search YT for "NASA: Risk is our Business"). I only wish that they'd remembered this speech 15 or 20 years ago when Star Trek started to jump the tracks. Today they've completely gone off the rails, slid down the hill, and sunk in the swamp.
@@maingun07 "Today they've completely gone off the rails, slid down the hill, and sunk in the swamp." Bro, Star Trek was ALWAYS socially liberal. ALWAYS. Black people central to the story from day 1. Women equal to men from Day 1. Endorsed by the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., who encouraged Nichelle Nichols to stay on the show because he thought it was important for young African-Americans to see themselves in the future and would move America forward. I don't know why maga watches shows in which they are the bad guys. You are the bad guys in Star Wars also.
Just one example of Fake Trek: So What Now's breaking of canon. Dr. Boyce was the doctor with Captain Pike and Dr. Piper was before McCoy when Kirk was in command of the Enterprise.
@@timmooney7528 Bah! Chapel and M'Benga being involved with this show was a blatant attempt to lure fans with TOS characters they know despite the show being set more than a decade prior to TOS.
For the slapping scene, Nimoy told Bradshaw to slap him for real rather than do any stage slapping. "I can take it," said Nimoy. "Just make it look good because I don't want to do any retakes." So the director says, "Action!" and Bradshaw hit Nimoy so hard that his ears flew off, ruining the take. After Nimoy chased him all over the set and things quieted down, they went back to the stage slaps that you see in the episode.
5:24 "I am a Kahn-ut-tu woman. In all this land, how many are there? Men seek us because through us they become great leaders. We have also, over the years, inspired quite a lot of fan fiction."
The scene where Spock gets slapped & backhanded was actual, Nimoy insisted that it look real, he also insisted that it be done in one take......aparantley he didn't want to get the bejeepers slapped out of him with multiple takes ! Enjoyed these reactions Courtney.
These are two weird episodes. You've got "A Private Little War" which strangely gets credit as Trek's Vietnam episode - and a poisonous monkey/yeti/rhino... thing, and then there is "Return to Tomorrow" with yet another god-like precursor civilization who claim to have propagated humanoids throughout the galaxy - one of many species to make this claim, but it does explain why Klingons, Humans and Vulcans can interbreed.
10:32 "I mean, he's _grateful,_ but he doesn't wanna give y'all... all this... unnecessary _power."_ Kirk shows his appreciation for what Nona has done by withholding technology from these people for which they are obviously not ready, yet. That's what would happen, after all, if the Federation shared its technology _freely_ with these people. They would wipe themselves out.
You have to remember that this was the cold war and some plots are "current events" plots. Every Kligon plot is one, so far. If the communists aided one side in a civil war or conflict between small nations, then we armed the other side.
Something just occurred to me. Now, I understand that Kirk’s comment about his survey 13 years prior and his recommendation was actually referring to the creation of the Prime Directive. I had thought for years that he meant that he recommended that the Prime Directive ought to apply to this planet.
I think your original impression is the correct one. Apply the Prime Directive to the planet, not that he was one of the main contributors to the creation of the Directive. Remember, 13 years earlier would be when he was on the U.S.S. Farragut. The first ship he was assigned to after graduating from the Starfleet Academy.
@@pauld6967 I’ll have to watch the episode in its entirety again. My impression would be that his recommendation was during that service on the Farragut. His recommendation to create the Prime Directive.
39:27 "But is Captain Kirk dead? His body is, but his consciousness is still in the receptacle into which it was transferred, earlier." And that sucks.
In "A Private, Little War," the proxy war which the federation and the Klingons were fighting on the planet was similar to the proxy war the US and Soviet Union were fighting in Vietnam when the episode came out.
A Private Little War pissed off the senior execs at NBC. The network restricted Vietnam commentary to the NBC News division, and Roddenberry was able to circumvent them through scifi.
Kirk referred to the Earth analogue as the "brush wars" in Asia. In the late 1960's, the war in Viet Nam (referred to as "the American War" if you live there) was the singular conflict historically recognized by the USA, but it spilled over into neighboring countries like Cambodia and Laos. Of course this wasn't the only war in Asia in the late 20th century that involved the super-powers, but it was the one that the Trek writers knew about. The balance of power that they debated in this episode was, I think, also a reference to the policy of mutual assured destruction that the USA and USSR adopted with regard to the nuclear arms race. We saw this also in "The Doomsday Machine".
@@paulsander5433 It was probably the war that the Trek writers knew about because it was in progress. The key concept for the episode is that they were both proxy wars with much more powerful players each backing one side in a local conflict. Mutually assured destruction applies to a situation in which available weapons are too powerful to use. I lived through every minute of this.
I enjoyed PLW, however, the Vietnam War reference in it did not age particularly well because Kirk's proposal for a balance of power never happened. The Americans lost the war 7 years after unless PWL was a reference to a particular public debate for a solution popular at that time in 1967-68. In that case, it would be even more obscure since it evaporated many years ago. Nona's death was tragic and I didn't appreciate how the episode degraded after that./ I love RT, it was a beautiful love story. I like how the actors got a chance to play two characters each.
I agree completely on 'A Private Little War' not aging well. Kirk's idea of 'a balance of power' not only never happened, but I don't think we have any example of that ever happening - in countries around the world and down through history (including from our perspective in 2024 - 49 years after Vietnam fell to the Communists in 1975, the Communists then massacred their opponents in numbers that made deaths during the American involvement look like almost nothing, then Vietnam over the years slowly moved to embrace a degree of economic freedoms. ) A better principle would be to take something closer to the opposite of the view that the writers put into Kirk's mouth for this episode: In any great conflict between two forces, one side wins and one side loses (and it seems that victory is never final). ...After the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, it was easy to take the view that the West had 'won the Cold War,' but given the wide collapse of the American way of life (inside America) during the past five years, even that simple statement must be called into question. When watching the episode again, I find that the writers placed my own view into the mouth of the villain (Nona). ...Nona's viewpoint (wanting the most advanced weapons and the best strategic alliances, to achieve a quick victory for her people and also the morally best side -- the least aggressive, least bloodthirsty side) doesn't make her the Bad Guy; rather, it's other things (her treatment of Kirk and Tyree, indicating she wants her influential men drugged and subservient or sex-crazed; Her stupidity in not taking the time to experiment with the phaser so that she could actually use it when needed...)
@@tranya327 "I agree completely on 'A Private Little War' not aging well. Kirk's idea of 'a balance of power' not only never happened" Submariner here. It does exist between NATO and Russia/China, it is known as "Mutual Assured Destruction". "l). ...After the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, it was easy to take the view that the West had 'won the Cold War,' " Maga detected, opinion dismissed
It was good to see these episodes again through your fresh eyes. Having seen them so many times before, they had kind of lost power with me. But they are good episodes. The ambitious woman in the first episode is a standout character, and possessed Spock in the second is a memorable performance.
Nancy Kovack, who played Tyree’s him wife, was one of my favourite actresses when I was younger. She was a guest star multiple times on the show Bewiched where she showed off her comedic chops. She was a guest star in mini mini series of the time, as well as movies, like the science fiction hit Marooned, and Colt, favorite, and still very cool movie, Jason and the Argonauts. This episode was pretty much an allegory about the Vietnam war, which was going on at the time.
Court, a tiny correction. Hennoc was not a friend of Sargon and Thelassa. He was from the opposing faction in the conflict that destroyed Sargon's world. Last ditch survival in the bunker superceded the ideological differences that brought about the need to go into the bunker.
A little whoops. Anne Mulhall is a lieutenant commander, so she would clearly be a department head - she would not have to introduce herself to Captain Kirk. Also she is bio sciences but wearing a red uniform instead of a blue sciences uniform.
The TOS writers took the name Sargon from history. Sargon of Akkad, also known as Sargon the Great, was the first ruler of the Akkadian Empire, known for his conquests of the Sumerian city-states in the 24th to 23rd centuries BCE. He is sometimes identified as the first person in recorded history to rule over an empire (in the sense of the central government of a multi-ethnic territory). Sargon shared his name with two later Mesopotamian kings. Sargon I was a king of the Old Assyrian period presumably named after Sargon of Akkad. Sargon II was a Neo-Assyrian king named after Sargon of Akkad; it is this king whose name was rendered Sargon in the Hebrew Bible (Isaiah 20:1).
In Return to Tomorrow that is Diana Muldaur who plays Dr Ann Muldaur. She returns as a regular to Star Trek in the Next Generation as ship's doctor Katherine Pulaski. Both of these episodes have some good emotional arcs for the crew and the guest stars, and evil Spock is scary. I do feel sorry for poor Tyree in the first episode.
Tyree's wife may have been manipulative, but she could see that the other tribe WOULD annihilate them in time. Flintlocks would maintain the balance with their enemies, but even one phaser would end them.
the ironic thing about return to tomorrow is at the start when sargon says " if u let us perrish , then all of mankind must perrish to". but yet at the end of this episode, Sargon and his wife perrish into oblivion and mankind stays alive? oh and by the way your commentary and insight is just excellant love watching your star trek reactions. i am 63 and grew up with all of these episodes , just great to see the younger generation appreciating them to.
True, god like beings are always making doomsday statements, but I've always take Sargon's as "You are doomed to make the same mistakes we did." But maybe just by knowing now that that is a possibility we can avoid it. It's a slim hope, but isn't hope for the future what Star Trek is about?
@@maingun07 I agree with your interpretation that Sargon is saying that without their guidance mankind is doomed to make the same mistakes that his race did leading to mankind's ultimate destruction too, which makes much more sense than thinking he is literally saying that if his race perished then humanity will also immediately perish. However, the statement "But maybe just by knowing now that that is a possibility we can avoid it" is a real stretch since humanity has known about its capability to destroy itself since about the 1950s, so Sargon's tale of his race's destruction is not a new possibility previously unknown to humanity, especially in the Star Trek universe in which mankind already went through World War III, and in which Vulcan also went through a devastating nuclear holocaust.
Once the genie is out of the bottle. As someone who spent 30 years of his life serving in the Cold War to preserve the peace, this is a poignant episode.
The wigs and the globes got some attention in the blooper reel. I don't like Nona very much. She was very ambitious, manipulative, opportunistic, and disloyal. She was going to sell out her husband to his enemy for a little power. She even mentioned Apella (the village leader) by name as she brandished the new weapon, which tells me that she was prepared to dump Tyree or even to orchestrate his death. Once upon a time, I felt sympathy for her for the way she was treated by the villagers, but today, not so much. Sargon and company lamented the absence of the sensation of touch after they would seal themselves into their android bodies. It's interesting that the Trek writers didn't anticipate tactile sensors that could be integrated into their bodies given that the first such devices were invented in the 1970's. You'd think that the writers would have heard stories from people saying that they're developing such sensors and are close to having something practical enough to use in real robots. But it does make for some effective motivation for these characters to steal some flesh.
"A Private Little War" Cool monster. 😱 Hot broad 😍😍Solid storyline 😎 "Return to Tomorrow" 1. This week we're facing GODS. 2. One hit wonder(again) for Kirk's squeeze. Too bad Grace Lee Whitney isn't still around so she would have been a much better match 3. This episode ranks in the top 10 (but not top 5) The interest is there, but it falls short of the Star Trek (hottie trope)
